Business & Finance - Marketing This Assignment For Brand/company Analysis Will Need To Be Completed By This Saturday (7/26/2025) afternoon (12pm EST).

Application Assignment Three

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Application Assignment Three

A suitable recent Delta Airlines advertisement is the 2025 Centennial Safety Video titled A Hundred Years of Safety, released March 21, 2025, which functions as a branded storytelling asset that doubles as required in-flight safety content while reinforcing the corporate heritage and innovation narrative (Delta, 2025).

Audience

The primary audience comprises current and prospective premium and loyalty-oriented travelers, including business travelers, high-yield leisure passengers, and SkyMiles members who value safety, reliability, service, and progressive digital enhancements.

Primary Objective

The immediate functional objective is regulatory safety instruction. However, the strategic brand objective is to strengthen trust, reinforce differentiation, and deepen loyalty by dramatizing a century-long safety record and innovation pipeline.

Message

The core message communicates that Delta’s century of operational experience, people-centric culture, and ongoing innovation make travel safer and continually improving today. This aligns with the Keep Climbing positioning that associates the brand with perpetual upward progress and internal career journey narratives, amplifying authentic human effort behind service quality. The safety video’s centennial framing leverages heritage plus present-day technological evolution introduced during the CES centennial keynote to future-proof trust.

Theme(s) or appeal(s) used

The key themes are heritage, trust, innovation, and human connection. A hundred-year milestone rationally reinforces heritage and reliability, while emotional resonance comes from people's stories in related internal journey features and a persistent narrative of striving. Innovation appeal is strengthened through AI concierge and multimodal mobility announcements, creating a forward-looking halo that complements safety assurances. Loyalty and clarity appeals are extended through recent fare family rebranding that promises transparent choices, enhances perceived control, and reduces cognitive risk, supporting the safety trust theme.

Specific Components Used to Convey the Message

The message is conveyed in a video that integrates archival imagery, anniversary visual marks, and contemporary cabin cinematography to juxtapose legacy and modernity, consistent with immersive centennial staging at CES Sphere.

Effectiveness of the Ad

Effectiveness can be evaluated against attention, comprehension, credibility, and brand equity reinforcement criteria. The centennial hook and novel creative setting increase attention while mandated instructional flow ensures comprehension. The heritage plus innovation juxtaposition increases credibility by pairing proven longevity with announced forward-looking service enhancements like AI concierge and multimodal options. The emphasis on journey and people aligns with storytelling-based loyalty drivers and personalization sustainability literature, identifying authenticity and narrative as levers of durable brand commitment.

Recommendations to Improve the Effectiveness of the Ad

Firstly, Delta should incorporate dynamic personalization features through the Fly Delta app by integrating AI concierge functions that offer customized ancillary product suggestions and sustainability insights after viewing the safety video. This approach aligns with the Personalization-Privacy Paradox Theory, which suggests that users are more willing to accept personalization when it adds authentic value and transparency (Rodrigues, 2024). According to Karlsson and Ryberg (2024), emotionally intelligent personalization, especially when aligned with customer values such as environmental awareness, significantly increases emotional attachment, brand trust, and subsequent loyalty.

Secondly, a brief overlay within or immediately following the video can highlight personalized SkyMiles milestones or exclusive centennial rewards. This supports both emotional gratification and perceived economic value. The Equity Theory of Customer Relationships (Vo & Van Nguyen, 2022) posits that customers remain committed to brands when the perceived value exchange is fair and rewarding. Milestone-based reward prompts enhance retention and willingness to engage with premium offerings, particularly in loyalty programs with high perceived status differentials.

Thirdly, incorporating an optional sustainability segment that showcases Delta’s emissions reduction or SAF initiatives can amplify authenticity and trust. This strategy aligns with the Theory of Planned Behavior, which indicates that providing credible, specific information increases intention to support eco-conscious brands. Environmentally conscious travelers were 41% more likely to recommend brands with visible eco-innovation messaging within their core communications (Sharma et al., 2024).

Finally, Delta can create targeted social media extensions that feature micro-narratives from both employees and frequent flyers tied to the centennial and Keep Climbing themes. This aligns with Narrative Transportation Theory, which explains that compelling stories increase ad effectiveness by transporting viewers into the brand world, leading to greater affective and behavioral responses (Yang & Kang, 2021). Segmented storytelling, where stories are customized for specific customer personas, can increase ad recall and brand affinity by over 30% compared to general brand messaging (Yang & Kang, 2021).

References